Role Reversal
by M. Marchand
Summary: Alan's got the flu and Charlie's there to take care of him.


Acknowledgements:  
Omi as always  
Kate the uberbeta, faster than a speeding electron (well almost)  
To the Numb3rsdot orgfolks who appreciate Alan and want to see more of him

Disclaimers:  
"A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend" - Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
I do not own the characters Alan, Charlie or Don nor do I have any rights  
to anything related to the TV show Numb3rs. I plead fair use and claim  
only my own writing and characters.

* * *

Alan never caught the flu. He always said that. It just wasn't exactly true.

As he walked around the house, picking up after Charlie as usual, he knew he wouldn't be able to deny it much longer. He was sick.

As he straightened yet another stack of math journals, he looked around the room. He'd cleared the dining room table of Charlie's papers and notebooks, moved all his loose books to the basket at the foot of the stairs so he could take them back up to the solarium and put all of Charlie's mail into his almost overflowing inbox tray. Alan sighed. He'd been nagging Charlie to empty out his tray before the mail fell on the floor, but once again, it looked almost ready to topple.

He headed for the kitchen to get a drink and felt so woozy along the way he stopped to sit down on one of the dining room chairs.

"Hey Pop!" Charlie zoomed in, dropping his satchel in the walkway by the door and casually tossing the new mail on the previously cleared off dining room table. "I'm going to... Hey..." Charlie stopped when he got a good look at his father's pale and sweaty face. "You don't look so good." His voice took on a genuine note of concern. "Are you okay?"

"Ah," Alan waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. "I just might be coming down with something."

Charlie stood and looked at him for a few seconds then reached for his arm. "Up! Come on!" He pulled his father to get him to stand, then gently pushed him towards the stairwell. "Bed. Now."

"Charlie!" Alan stopped, knowing with the difference in their sizes there was no way his much smaller son could make him go anywhere he didn't want to go. "I'm fine."

"You're also retired," Charlie argued, trying to push him again, despite the futility of his actions. "You have nothing to do that can't wait for you to get over a cold or the flu or whatever this is."

"I have my volunteer work at the shelter tomorrow!" Alan argued, obstinately staying put and greatly annoying his son.

Charlie let out a sound of frustration. "And how much good do you think it's going to do them if you show up and get everyone sick? Trust me, they'd rather have you miss a day than be there and contagious. Besides, if you don't go upstairs willingly I might have to force you."

"Oh yeah, my little boy?" Alan smirked. "What could you possibly do to make me want to go upstairs if I don't want to?"

Charlie got a devilish look in his eye and took a deep breath.

"Oh, Mandy. You came and you gave without taking..." Charlie sang as loudly and as badly as he could and Alan instantly covered his ears.

"Aah! Not the Barry Manilow! Okay, okay, I'm going!" Alan rushed up the stairs and only stopped part way up when Charlie stopped singing. "But only for today, that's it. I'm going to go to the shelter tomorrow like normal."

"You're not going anywhere until you're better," Charlie's voice floated up the stairwell. "I'll make sure of that. Go on up, I'll get you something cool to drink."

"Charlie!" Alan protested.

"At the Copa! Copacabana!" Charlie's voice rang out even louder than before.

"Okay, okay!" Alan yelled over the din. "I'm going to bed."

In the kitchen, Charlie just grinned.

* * *

When Alan woke after a long and fitful nap, his eyes landed on the water pitcher Charlie had placed on the nightstand earlier. After a few groggy seconds wondering how there could be more ice after the passage of time, his thoughts cleared and he realized Charlie must have refilled it.

He sat up slightly and poured himself a glass. He drank most of it then held it in his hand as he looked around his bedroom.

Charlie had evidently brought in an extra side table from the solarium and set it up near Alan's bed. He could see what was on it from where he was sitting: several magazines, a stack of books, an unopened box of granola bars, a small bowl with several tangerines in it and a few napkins tucked underneath, and Charlie's CD player and headphones.

Alan reached over and popped open the CD player, expecting to find a music CD. Instead, he found an audio book by Carl Sagan. Alan read the title, 'The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence' and chuckled. "That's Charlie for you!"

Still, he got back in bed, put on the headphones and pressed play.

* * *

When he woke next, the CD player was back on the table and there was a tray set up next to the bed. It had two thermoses, an empty glass, a spoon, and a napkin on it. Alan sat up and opened the tall slender thermos: orange juice. He poured some into the empty glass and drank a little.

He opened the shorter wider thermos next. Alan took a sniff: matzo ball soup. He smiled and put the cover back on.

As he padded down the hall to the bathroom, he heard voices in the solarium. As he stood outside the door he could hear a woman's soft laugh followed by Charlie's deeper one. Amita. Alan smiled and walked away as quietly as possible so they wouldn't hear him.

* * *

Alan stretched as he woke, but his body was so achy it wasn't a pleasant experience. The flu had finally taken hold and he felt miserable.

"Morning." Alan looked up to find Don perusing the reading material Charlie had left out the day before. "How are you feeling?"

"Lousy," Alan admitted. The tray table was gone, but the orange juice thermos was on the nightstand next to the pitcher of water.

"Well, you're obviously sick." Don selected one of the magazines and went and sat down across the room with it. "I hope you don't mind me keeping my distance," he said, chuckling. "I had the flu last year and I forgot to get my shot this time around."

Alan looked at the clock, finding it hard to think. "It's Wednesday. It's 10:45 in the morning."

"Yup," Don said.

"You're not at work."

Don shrugged. "I took the morning off. Charlie couldn't get out of his morning lecture so he asked me to sit with you until lunchtime."

Alan made a disgruntled sound. "I don't need a baby sitter."

Don smiled. "No, but someone needs to let Dr. Craddock in when he rings the doorbell in about..." Don glanced at his watch, "forty-five minutes."

"Dr. Craddock still makes house calls?" Alan asked.

"I guess. Charlie's the one who arranged for it," Don said. "He just asked me to be here and make sure you behaved yourself."

"Heh!" Alan huffed. "Who does he think he is? My mother?"

Don laughed. "Yeah, it might not come out often but I can see a bit of Grandma in Charlie. He does the mother hen thing well when he puts his mind towards it."

Alan put a few spare pillows, which had mysteriously appeared overnight on the other side of the bed, behind him so he could sit up.

"Just let me know when you're ready for breakfast and I'll bring it up."

"Such royal treatment!" Alan guffawed. "I should get sick more often if it means my sons waiting on me hand and foot!"

"Well, to be fair, Charlie made you breakfast before he left," Don admitted. "I just need to reheat it"

"Okay," Alan said. "I'm curious to see what Charlie made since he never cooks."

* * *

Alan could hear the door close downstairs after Don showed Dr. Craddock out. After a minute or two, Don reappeared and picked up Alan's prescription container to read it.

"Okay, Tamiflu... 75mg twice a day for five days. You had one dose already so I'll tell Charlie he needs to make sure you take the second dose later."

"You don't have to wait around, Donnie," Alan said, stifling a cough. "I'll be fine alone."

"Nice try," Don said with a grin. "But if it's all the same to you, I'll stay and avoid the wrath of Charlie."

"The wrath of Charlie?" Alan raised an eyebrow. "This is hardly something he'd get up in arms about."

"You think?" Don looked up at his father. "How well do you really know your son, Dad?"

"Feh! I raised both of you! I know you better than you know each other, that's for sure!"

"Really?" Don had a glint in his eyes as he sat down and put his feet up. "So if you know us so well, which of your sons has jumped out of a plane?"

"What? Skydiving?" Alan exclaimed. "I had hoped I'd raised two sons smart enough not to throw themselves out of a perfectly good plane, but obviously I was mistaken. Well since your brother's the genius and you were always the adrenaline junkie of the two of you, I guess you."

Don grinned. "Wrong. Charlie did it for his twenty-first birthday. Next question..."

"Oh what, we're playing guess the Eppes now?" Alan complained.

"Sure, why not? I've got a half hour left before Charlie gets back and I leave," Don said. "Okay, which of your sons fell asleep on a bus and wound up two hours from home."

"Heh, that's an easy one!" Alan said. "That's got Charlie written all over it."

"Wrong again, Dad. That was me when I played ball in Stockton. I was dog tired and my car was in the shop, so I crashed on the bus and only woke up at the end of the line because the driver kicked me off the bus!"

"So how did you get home then?"

Don almost blushed and quickly said, "That doesn't matter. Next question! Which of your sons makes a perfect margarita?"

"Well, so far I've gotten all of them wrong, so I think I should guess the opposite of what I think is true. I think you do, since Charlie barely drinks at all, so therefore it must be Charlie. Am I right?"

Don laughed. "Now you're thinking like Charlie! Yeah, he may not drink much now, but he got a little wild in his early twenties. I guess he was just making up for missing out on college keg parties when he was a teenager. We went to a party at his friend's house one year when I came back to visit for the holidays. His buddy was a psychopharmacology grad student and he had a set of glass beakers to measure stuff with. Charlie evidently had bought him a second set to use in his bar to measure mixed drinks to the milliliter! Cracked me up that Charlie had come up with an equation to figure out the exact volume of ice needed." Don smiled at the memory. "That was one damn good margarita!"

They both stopped when they heard noises out in the front yard. Don stood up and looked out the window.

"Charlie's back early. I'm going to go down and let him know what Dr. Craddock said. You rest."

Alan nodded, closing his eyes as Don left and without meaning to, fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

The next several days passed pretty much the same. Alan would wake to food and drink and written reminders to take his medicine. Sometimes the house seemed quiet, other times he could hear Charlie working in the solarium with the door shut to block the noise.

There was always a pitcher of ice water beside his bed and new books and magazines appeared, as well as several audio book CDs along with extra batteries for the CD player. Charlie had thought of everything.

On the fifth day, Alan was woken from a nap by Charlie jostling him slightly. "Dad? Wake up."

"Charlie?" Charlie was sitting on the edge of his bed. It hit Alan at that point that he hadn't seen his son since he chased him up the stairs the first day. Everything he had done for him had been while he was asleep. "What's wrong?"

"You forgot to take your Tamiflu pill this morning. I have to leave for my afternoon classes and I need to make sure you take it before I go, since you have to take the next dose this evening."

"I took it," Alan said. "I remember doing it."

"No, Dad. You didn't take it. You may think you did but you didn't."

"What makes you so sure," Alan said a bit grumpily.

Charlie showed him the prescription bottle's label. "See those marks? I've been counting off each pill as you take it and there should be three left in the bottle at this point. There's not. There's four, so you missed this morning's dose."

Charlie removed the cap and shook a pill into it. "Here," he said.

Alan held out his hand and Charlie overturned the cap into his palm. Charlie got up and handed him his water from his nightstand, waiting for him to take the pill before he took the glass back.

"Get some rest," he said softly. "Your lunch is right here on the tray when you're ready for it. I'll be back later to fix you dinner." Charlie got up and headed for the door.

"Charlie?" Alan called out to him.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I haven't seen you the last few days. You must be working on something really big, huh?" Alan said, keeping his tone light.

"Well..." Charlie said nervously. "It's not really one big thing. I've just been kind of run down lately and I'm afraid I'll get sick if I spend too much time with you. Too many people are relying on me for me to be out sick. I'm really sorry. I mean, I should be in here with you, keeping you company..."

"No, no!" Alan said. "That's not what I meant at all!" Even as he said it, he realized that that was what he meant. He had missed his son but wasn't selfish enough to let him get sick over it. "I understand, Charlie. I understand and I appreciate all that you've done for me."

The worry was suddenly erased from Charlie's face and he broke out in a big smile. "No sweat, Pop. Now get some rest and I'll be back this evening."

Before Alan could say another word Charlie was gone again.

* * *

Alan took his second to last pill when he finished his breakfast and decided he felt well enough to venture downstairs.

Part of him was afraid of what he'd find. He envisioned papers everywhere, the week's mail in disarray, and a stack of newspapers on the front doorstep.

He turned the corner and looked out into the living area, ready for the worst.

The house was immaculate.

Alan wandered through the house, in shock. The house hadn't looked anywhere near this good when he first got sick so Charlie obviously had to have made a supreme effort to get it looking that nice and to keep it looking that good.

Alan ran a finger across the tops of a few of the photograph frames. No dust.

He walked next into the kitchen, expecting a near empty refrigerator and pantry since he hadn't been around to grocery shop. While he did find a half empty pizza box in the refrigerator, a quick peek at the contents told him it was the kind he usually ordered for Amita, not for himself. There were a few deli containers, but otherwise it looked well stocked.

The pantry was an even bigger surprise. Not only was it nearly full, it had been completely reorganized. Each shelf had labels denoting what could be found on that shelf and new wire shelves had been installed to allow easier pull out access to the full depth of the pantry.

All the dishes were done, the kitchen was spotless and even the floors looked freshly mopped. Alan did a tour of the whole downstairs and couldn't find a thing to do. Even Charlie's mail had all been cleared out.

"Well, I'll be," he said.

* * *

"Dad! What are you doing out of bed?" Charlie walked in, dropping his satchel by the door like normal. Alan seemed oddly comforted by the fact that he tossed the mail on the bare dining room table like he always did.

"Careful! You're going to mess up your perfectly tidy house!" Alan joked, pointing to the disarray on the table.

Charlie glanced back at it with a shrug. "I'll get to it. I always do." He turned back to his father. "But you... What are you doing downstairs? You should be resting."

"I got bored," Alan admitted. "And part of me was worried I'd find the house in a state of disaster, so I thought I'd come down and do some damage control." Alan tried to make a joke of it, but Charlie's expression told him he hadn't pulled it off.

"Is that what you think? That I'm a selfish slob and I expect you to clean up after me? Dad..."

Charlie sounded hurt and Alan rushed to explain. "No, no! It's just you're always so caught up in your numbers that I end up being the one to look after the house."

"I thought you liked that," Charlie said. "You seemed to like straightening things, so I figured I might as well let you. That doesn't mean I don't pick up after myself though. You just never leave anything sit long enough for me to get back to it."

"I... Well..." Alan hadn't really thought about it before, but part of his daily ritual was tidying up the house.

"Dad, I've been willing take on more since before I bought the house but you always brushed it off. You said you'd handle it so I let you. Since you've been sick, I figured it fell to me to keep the house up instead. And why not? I own it now, don't I? I should be taking care of it."

"The kitchen is spotless, the floors are mopped, everything's dusted... How did you find time for all of it?"

"Dad, I used a service. I've been having them come once a week for ages now."

Alan was shocked. "You're kidding me!"

"Sure," Charlie shrugged. "Housekeeping is a poor allocation of my time. I schedule them for when you're at the shelter. They handle my part of the household chores: the bathrooms, the kitchen and the floors. They also wash all the linens. This time I just had them do more. They did the dusting, the windows, cleaned out the fridge from top to bottom..."

"Okay, okay... But new shelving in the pantry?"

"The old system was inefficient. Don had put in similar shelving in Kim's condo in New Mexico so he helped me pick it out and install it. I'll probably end up adding new shelving to some other cabinets but I haven't had the chance to analyze our storage needs sufficiently yet."

Alan fell silent for a moment.

"Is that okay?" Charlie asked, a bit worried. "I mean, I know this house means a lot to you but it does to me too and I want to keep it looking nice. If you'd rather I didn't let people in the house though..."

Alan finally looked at his son. "No, no... I'm sure it's fine. I guess I just never realized..."

"What, how nice it would be to not have to do any housework for a change?" Charlie said.

"No," Alan said thoughtfully. "That my little boy could take care of himself, if I'd only let him."

Charlie smiled at his father. "Yes, I can take care of myself. I can also take care of you. Now, go back upstairs to bed and I'll get to work on dinner."

Alan started to protest, but Charlie took a deep breath as if he was about to start singing and Alan rushed for the stairs.

"Okay, okay... I'm going!"

"Yeah, you do that before I break out the greatest hits!"

* * *

Alan answered the door and greeted his guests. "Abigail! Marta! Come on in! We were just about to get started. I was hoping you'd make it."

The two women greeted Alan warmly and he got them settled with drinks in the living room with the rest of his book club.

As Alan was walking out of the kitchen, carrying two bowls of snacks for his guests, Charlie walked in.

He dropped his satchel in the walkway and placed the new mail into the new wall mounted mail holder he'd put up a week earlier.

Alan gave the satchel a pointed glance and looked at Charlie.

"It's only for a minute!" Charlie laughed. "I'll take it with me once I head up to the solarium to work!"

Charlie glanced into the living room and offered a quick wave to the few folks he recognized.

"If it's Thursday it might be book club?" he said.

Alan smiled. "Yeah, it ends up they like meeting over here and to be truthful, it's nice to have company in the house more often."

"I'm glad then," Charlie said, giving his father's arm an affectionate squeeze. "Enjoy yourself."

Charlie walked into the kitchen and came out with a drink. He picked up his satchel and headed for the stairs. "I'll be in the solarium if you need me."

"Sure thing," Alan said as he watched his son walk away. "Oh and Charlie?"

Charlie halted at the foot of the stairs. "Yeah, Dad?"

"Thank you," Alan said, sincerely. "You were right. I know you never said it out loud, but there is more to retirement than puttering around the house."

Charlie flashed him a big smile. "Glad to hear it." He started up the stairs only to hear his father's voice call out to him.

"Just don't get any ideas about me taking up skydiving!"


End file.
